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Outer Solar System/Transcript
Transcript An image shows a night sky and stars through a pair of binoculars. . Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby. TIM: Ooh, I think I see Neptune! An animation shows a man, Tim, and a robot, Moby, at a campsite. Tim is lying on the ground in a sleeping bag partially sticking out of a camping tent. He is holding a star chart in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. He then looks at the stars through his binoculars and Moby covers the binoculars with a piece of paper. TIM: Wha-? Ah... give me that! Tim stops looking at the stars and takes the paper from Moby. An image shows Tim’s hand holding a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Is there really such a thing as Planet X? Your friend, Charlotte. The scene changes back to Tim lying in the sleeping bag, holding the binoculars and the letter. TIM: Well, not really. Planet X was the name given for a theoretical planet some astronomers thought existed beyond the orbit of Neptune. An animation shows the planets and their orbits in the solar system, moving away from the sun. The last planet shown and its orbit are labeled “Planet Upper X”. The next planet to the left of it is labeled “Neptune.” TIM: Bu—but their hypothesis was based on faulty calculations of Neptune’s mass! Tim addresses the camera. TIM: So the search for Planet X was kind of pointless... An animation shows the camera panning across stars in the night sky. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Okay, not completely pointless. An animation shows Moby looking at Tim. Tim is holding a star chart. TIM: For a while, Pluto was thought to be the missing planet. A diagram shows two planets and their orbits. One planet is dark purple with a white ring around its center, and the other is small and brown. The smaller planet is labeled “Pluto.” TIM: But Pluto wasn’t massive enough to fit the estimates of Planet X’s probable size. The diagram expands to show a third planet and its orbit to the right of the previously shown two planets. The added planet has a question mark placed in the middle of it. TIM: Today, people just use the term Planet X to mean some undiscovered major planet of the solar system. A close-up image of the planet with a question mark in the middle of it is shown against a night sky. TIM: But, you know, there probably won’t be any more planets found. An animation shows the planet with the questions mark disappearing. TIM: But there are tons of other objects that keep popping up in the far regions of the solar system! An animation first shows the sun and several other planets surrounded by a ring of gray specks, and then zooms out to show the entire solar system, represented by light purple dots arranged in a spherical pattern against a night sky. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Well, I’ll tell you! An animation shows Moby sitting next to Tim and looking at him while Tim is talking to him. TIM: First of all, anything that orbits the sun farther than the planet Neptune is called a trans- Neptunian object. An animation shows the planets of the solar system. The camera pans away from the sun. Then Neptune’s orbit is added and an arrow pointing away from Neptune and the sun is added. Text added above the arrow reads: trans-Neptunian objects. TIM: There are more than 1,000 trans-Neptunian objects in the solar system — and counting! An animation keeps extending the arrow from Neptune until no planets are visible. Stars and other small colored objects are shown. The text “trans-Neptunian objects” is still written above the arrow. MOBY: Beep? Moby blinks. Tim: Well, the most well-known is Pluto, which was recently reclassified as a dwarf planet. An image of a planet labeled “Pluto” is shown against a night sky. Text at the top right reads: dwarf planet. TIM: Dwarf planets are kind of like regular planets, but generally smaller. MOBY: Beep? Moby first looks up, then blinks and looks back down. TIM: Yup, Pluto is also a Kuiper belt object. An animation shows the sun and the planets of the solar system, then zooms out to show a ring around the planets composed of small objects. The ring is labeled “Kuiper belt.” TIM: The Kuiper belt is a ring of icy debris orbiting the sun beyond Neptune. Scientists think this stuff has stayed pretty unchanged from the time the solar system first formed — about four and a half billion years ago! An animation shows a cloud of dust and debris circling the sun. TIM: Pluto’s moons, Charon, Hydra, and Nix, are also Kuiper belt objects. An image shows a big, brown planet labeled “Pluto”, a smaller, purple moon labeled “Charon” partially overlapping it on the left, and two small, gray moons labeled “Hydra” and “Nix” above and below it. TIM: Other large Kuiper bodies include Orcus, Quaoar, and Varuna. An image is divided vertically into three equal parts and shows three round bodies of different colors decreasing in size from left to right. The first is labeled “Orcus,” the second is labeled “Quaoar,” and the third, the smallest one, is labeled “Varuna.” TIM: Farther out from the Kuiper belt is an area called the scattered disc. The image of the sun, the planets, and the Kuiper belt is shown. Different sized objects scattered around the Kuiper belt are highlighted in blue and labeled “Scattered disc.” TIM: Scientists say scattered disc objects are... well, Kuiper belt rejects! Tim addresses the camera. TIM: They’ve literally been thrown out. The image of the sun, the planets, the Kuiper belt, and the scattered disc is shown again. TIM: One of these is a dwarf planet called Eris. An image is shown of a gray planet, labeled “Eris,” against a night sky. Tim: Eris is actually the largest dwarf planet in the solar system — it’s just a bit bigger than Pluto! The screen is split in half vertically and displays Eris on the left and Pluto on the right. TIM: Sedna, another large scattered disc object, hasn’t been fully categorized yet. An image of a dark red planet is shown against a night sky and is labeled “Sedna.” TIM: They say it’s one of the reddest bodies in the solar system — maybe even redder than Mars! The screen is split in half vertically and displays Sedna on the left and Mars, significantly bigger and lighter in color than Sedna, on the right. MOBY: Beep? An animation shows Moby blink twice. TIM: Well, planetary scientists aren’t sure whether Sedna is one of the farthest scattered disc objects or part of another region: the Oort cloud. An animation first shows the sun, the planets, the Kuiper belt, and the scattered disc objects. It then zooms out to show a big spherical object composed of light colored particles. The spherical object is labeled “Oort cloud.” TIM: The Oort cloud is a whole light-year away from the sun — it takes an entire year for a ray of sunshine to reach it! Tim addresses the camera. Text reads: Oort cloud. TIM: It’s by far the most distant known region of the solar system. An image of the Oort cloud is shown again. TIM: The Oort cloud is thought to be made of billions of small objects, mostly comets. An animation shows light blue and white objects that resemble crumbled sheets of paper moving across a night sky. Text reads: Oort cloud. TIM: Like the stuff in the Kuiper belt, objects in the Oort cloud are thought to have originated way back when the solar system was just starting up. An animation shows a cloud of dust and debris circling the sun. MOBY: Beep? An animation shows Moby blinking. TIM: Oh, the things I mentioned are all governed by the sun’s gravity, which stretches half way to the next star system! A diagram of the solar system is shown. The sun is on the left of the screen, planets and Kuiper belt to the right of it, followed by the scattered disc and the Oort cloud to the far right of the screen. All of the parts of the diagram are labeled and a horizontal red arrow labeled “gravity” goes through the image and points from the Oort cloud to the sun. TIM: But other important parts of the solar system are governed by the solar wind, a flow of charged particles produced by the sun. The arrow labeled “gravity” is removed and another, yellow horizontal arrow pointing from the sun extending to the middle of the scattered disc and labeled “solar wind” is added. TIM: For example, the termination shock is a boundary area where the particles of the solar wind slow way down. A curved, orange, vertical line is added along the boundary between the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc and is labeled “termination shock.” TIM: After that is the heliopause. Another, similar line labeled “heliopause” is added to the right of the line labeled “termination shock,” so that the arrow labeled “solar wind” points right to it. TIM: That’s where the solar wind gets stopped in its tracks by particles from the rest of outer space! Another yellow arrow labeled “interstellar wind” is added to extend from the Oort cloud to the line labeled “heliopause.” MOBY: Beep? An animation shows Moby blinking. TIM: The farthest that humans have ever gone is the moon, but several spacecraft have been to the outer regions of the solar system. An image of an astronaut walking on the moon is displayed on the screen, and then an image of a spacecraft against a night sky is added to the right of it. TIM: It’s been really hard to keep track of these guys, since the signals they emit are so weak and so far away now! An animation shows the spacecraft moving away from the camera into outer space until it eventually disappears. It makes an intermittent beeping sound that fades as the spacecraft moves farther and farther away. TIM: But scientists are pretty sure that both of the Voyager probes have passed the termination shock, and are closing in on the heliopause. A diagram shows the terminal shock as an orange circle with the sun and the planets of the solar system, including Earth, in the center of it. The heliopause is shown as a dark orange semicircle to the left of the termination shock with a bigger radius than the circle that represents the termination shock. Two objects, labeled Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, marked by Upper X’s, move away from the Earth with their paths shown as dotted curves. An animation shows the two X-marks going beyond the termination shock and closer to the heliopause. MOBY: Beep! An animation shows Moby blinking. TIM: Yeah, they’ve been traveling in space for about 35 years now! Two images are displayed next to each other against a night sky. The one on the left shows the Voyager 1 spacecraft and the one on the right shows the Voyager 2 spacecraft. TIM: The Pioneer 10 and 11 probes have been out there even longer. Two images are displayed next to each other against a night sky. The one on the left shows the Pioneer 10 spacecraft and the one on the right shows the Pioneer 11 spacecraft. TIM: They launched in the early 1970s and are also thought to be nearing the heliopause. An animation shows a spacecraft moving away from the camera into outer space until it eventually disappears. It makes an intermittent beeping sound that fades as the spacecraft moves farther and farther away. TIM: Man, I wonder what it must feel like to be so far from home... An animation shows Tim and Moby at their camp site in the middle of dark woods. MOBY: Beep! Beep! TIM: You... you know what it’s like out there? The camera zooms in on Tim and Moby. Tim addresses Moby. MOBY: Beep! Moby blinks, looks at Tim, and then looks at the night sky. TIM: Well... well, how do you know? When were you there? Tim addresses Moby. TIM: Are there... are there others like you? Tim addresses Moby while turning his head to look at him. TIM: Whoa... whoa... . An animation shows Moby blink and his eyes turn into a spinning hypnosis spiral which then expands to cover the entire screen. The spiraling pattern transfixes Tim and he falls asleep as Moby looks at the night skies through the binoculars. . Category:BrainPOP Transcripts